GUIFENG-YANSHOU CHAN MARGINALIZED AS A SYNCRETISM
I consider Zongmi’s primary persona to be a Chan persona, and there is evidence that such was the case for Zongmi himself and among his contemporaries, particularly his closest disciple and confidant Pei Xiu. At the end of the Chan Prolegomenon (section 58), a work Zongmi wrote at the peak of his powers, he expresses his joy at how fortunate he is to be the thirty-eighth-generation successor in the Chan mind transmission. Pei Xiu, the person who knew Zongmi best, states in the Stele Inscription for Chan Master Guifeng: “The Great Master was the fifth generation from Heze, the eleventh generation from Bodhidharma, the thirty-eighth generation from Kāśyapa—this was the series of his dharma lineage.”157 Pei’s funerary inscription makes little of Zongmi’s exposure to Chengguan’s Huayan, mentioning only that Zongmi visited Chengguan and quoting Chengguan’s praise of the young Chan monk.158 But Zongmi’s Chan persona and his influence on the later development of Chan are often seriously underplayed.
In Japan, when Zongmi is the topic, his Chan persona is not at center stage. He has usually been cast as the Kegon patriarchal master following Chengguan in the Kegon line and as the fountainhead of a syncretic type of Chan called the “union of the teachings and Zen” or “Kegon Zen,” with little made of the historical influence of Guifeng Chan on various developments in East Asian Chan.159 Such marginalizing of Zongmi as Chan master extends to his putative successor, Yanshou, who is usually presented not as a pure Chan figure but as a syncretist of the dual practice of Chan and recitation of Amida Buddha’s name (nenbutsu), in spite of the fact that Yanshou’s magnum opus, the Mind Mirror, explicitly says that buddha-recitation is just for those who lack faith in the Chan slogan “one’s own mind is the Buddha” and rush around seeking on the outside.160 The assumption is that such “syncretisms” are on the outskirts of the “pure Zen” precincts.161
This shunting of Zongmi and Yanshou to the periphery of Chan has had negative effects for the study of Chan in the West, contributing to the West’s skewed assessment of the East Asian Chan tradition as a whole. Too often we have read East Asian Chan through Japanese Zen since the Edo period. This has led to our present lack of knowledge concerning the collective impact of Zongmi and Yanshou in China and Korea and hence to thinking of Chan and textual study as more or less mutually exclusive. A byproduct has been a consuming preoccupation with Chan’s antitextual, antinomian, and iconoclastic rhetoric.
SUDDEN AWAKENING AND GRADUAL PRACTICE OF THE PERFECT AWAKENING SUTRA AND HEROIC PROGRESS SAMADHI SUTRA AS NORMATIVE IN EAST ASIAN CHAN
The Chan Prolegomenon designates the Perfect Awakening and the Heroic Progress Samadhi as expressions of one of the two types of the Buddha’s sudden teaching (dunjiao), the suddenness of his responding to beings of superior disposition (zhuji dun) after his enlightenment beneath the tree. Whenever during his long preaching career the Buddha encountered a being of superior faculties he suddenly revealed the true mind (zhenxin). However, as the very structure and content of both sutras illustrates, the beings who received this true-mind teaching, after suddenly awakening, still had to engage in practice in order gradually to rid themselves of the habit energy (xunxi) inherited from past births. According to the Chan Prolegomenon, these two sutras are a tally fit (fu) with the sudden gate (dunmen) of Chan. The Perfect Awakening and Heroic Progress Samadhi were widely read in Chan circles during the Song and Ming dynasties, and their orientation of sudden awakening to the nature axiom followed by gradual practice runs right through the middle of Song and Ming Chan, as well as the Chan of Xixia, Koryŏ Korea, and Ashikaga (Five Mountains) Japan. This sutra-based picture of East Asian Chan is most certainly not Chan as presented by modern Japanese Rinzai Zen, which does not stress the sutra-based Rinzai Zen of the Five Mountains in its genealogy. Rinzai Zen today transmits an image of Zen framed by the Record of Linji—wherein the real teacher boldly “discards the teachings of the Buddhist canon.”162
We can begin a cursory tracing of the evidence for the normative nature of the sudden awakening–gradual practice model of the Perfect Awakening and Heroic Progress Samadhi with the single most important Chan figure of the Song dynasty, Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163). In the Letters of Chan Master Dahui Pujue, Dahui strongly exhorts one of his correspondents never to forget the gradual practice that comes after sudden awakening, quoting as canonical support the Heroic Progress Samadhi:
This matter most definitely is not easy. You must produce a feeling of shame. Often people of sharp faculties and superior intellect get it [de zhi] without expending a lot of effort. They subsequently produce easy-going thoughts [rongyi xin] and do not engage in [post-awakening] practice [bian bu xiuxing]. In any case, they are snatched away by sense objects right in front of them and cannot act as a master subject. Days and month pass, and they wander about without coming back. Their Dao power cannot win out over the power of karma, and the Evil One gets his opportunity. They are surely grabbed up by the Evil One. On the verge of death they do not have effective power [bu de li]. By all means remember my words of previous days. [As the Heroic Progress Samadhi Sutra says:] “As to principle, one all-at-once awakens; riding this awakening, [thoughts of the unreal] are merged into annulment. But phenomena are not all-at-once removed; [only] by a graduated sequence are they exhausted.”163 Walking, standing, sitting, and lying, you must never forget this. As to all the various sayings of the ancients beyond this, you should not take them as solid, but you also should not take them as empty. If you become practiced over a long period of time [jiujiu chunshu], spontaneously and silently you will coincide with your own original mind. There is no need for separately seeking anything outstanding or unusual.164
Dahui’s Letters, in other words, assumes the sudden awakening–gradual practice paradigm. And in the Letters the gradual-practice component is Dahui’s new method of gazing-at-the-topic (the topic word or phrase of a case). In another letter Dahui speaks of this gradualistic method as analogous to the conditioning of a work animal:
In both still places and noisy places constantly lift up [to awareness the topic] cylinder-of-dried-shit. Days and months will pass, and the water buffalo will spontaneously become more practiced [zi chunshu]. More than anything else the thing you must not do is project another doubt onto something else. When the doubt on top of [the topic] cylinder-of-dried-shit is eradicated, then doubts as numerous as the sand grains of the Ganges River will simultaneously be eradicated.165
In Ming-dynasty Chan, the nature axiom/true mind and sudden awakening–gradual practice orientation of the Perfect Awakening and Heroic Progress Samadhi are prominent in the teachings of Hanshan Deqing (1546–1623), one of the most important Chan masters of the late Ming. Deqing in his Old Man Hanshan’s Dream Roving Collection (Hanshan laoren mengyouji) states:
You must not have your mind wait for awakening. Because our wonderful, perfect true mind [miaoyuan zhenxin], which from the outset transcends all oppositions, is congealed by thought of the unreal, and mind, sense organs, and sense objects stand in confrontation with it, for this reason, there is the arising of the depravities and the creation of karma. The practitioner in the now merely at one moment lays down the body-mind and world [= sudden awakening] and only lifts up this one moment to face forward.166 He absolutely must not bother about whether he is awakened or not awakened. Just moment after moment, step after step, he keeps on going167 [= gradual practice]…. The true mind from the outset is pure. Because it is stained by thought of the unreal, before long suffering and the depravities arise. The buddha body is originally one’s own mind. Because it is screened by ignorance, its radiance does not manifest. Mind is buddha. One’s own mind makes a buddha.168
Deqing, in fact, wrote commentaries on both the Perfect Awakening and the Heroic Progress Samadhi.169 In summing up the first three chapters of the Perfect Awakening, he argues that, during the final phase of dharma, sudden awakening and gradual practice is the appropriate model for all beings except those of extra-superior faculties, who are few and far between:
The previous Mañjuśrī chapter [of the sutra] directly says: “One knows these [illusory] flowers in the sky [zhi shi konghua], and so there is no wheel-turning [in samsara] and no body-mind to undergo that birth-and-death.” The Samantabhadra chapter says: “When you know illusion [zhi huan], you are free, without creating teaching devices. Freedom from illusion is awakening, and there are no gradual steps.” These [first two chapters] are the one mind of all-at-once awakening. On the spot one [attains] all-at-once realization, without wading through a course and without relying on practice. [These two chapters] are just the one character “Knowing” [dan yi zhizi] and that is all. These [two chapters] are so that those of extra-superior faculties can awaken. But what about [all those beings referred to in this sutra as] “sentient beings of the end period”? Those of extra-superior faculties are few, but those of medium and inferior faculties are numerous. If [the latter] do not practice, they will forever be in birth-and-death. If there are no correct teaching devices for practice, they will have no method by which to enter. If there are no gradual steps [wu jianci], it is even difficult to achieve all-at-once awakening.170
In the case of Xixia Chan, the Tangut-language text called The Mirror, which has a Guifeng Chan structure of nature axiom, sudden awakening, and gradual practice, quotes both the Heroic Progress Samadhi and Perfect Awakening.171 The Korean Sŏn master Chinul’s Excerpts cites both the Heroic Progress Samadhi and Perfect Awakening and argues for sudden awakening–gradual practice as the best approach for the present era; his Formula for Cultivating Mind also quotes the Heroic Progress Samadhi in support of sudden awakening–gradual practice.172 In Ashikaga Japan, beyond the examples of Shun’oku Myōha’s sudden awakening upon reading a line in the Perfect Awakening and Kiyō Hōshū as a second coming of Zongmi, we can look to the archetypal Five Mountains Zen master Gidō Shūshin (1325–1388), a junior contemporary of Myōha, and Zekkai Chūshin (1336-1405), a student of Myōha widely considered the greatest poet of all the Five Mountains Zen poet-monks. Gidō, who propounded the identity of the sutras and Zen, in his diary mentions both the Perfect Awakening and the Heroic Progress Samadhi many times, in fact, far more times than any other sutra, and also mentions his reading the Mind Mirror and copying out passages. Chūshin’s record mentions that he lectured on both of these sutras, and his year-by-year biography informs us that they constituted part of his daily curriculum.173 Though Gidō lectured on the nature axiom and sudden awakening–gradual practice paradigm of these sutras frequently, this “classical Buddhist” aspect of Gidō’s Zen is never emphasized. Treatments of Gidō highlight instead his literary side, the many poems he left behind and his lectures on the Song collection of Tang poetry entitled Poems in Three Styles (Santai shi). Chūshin, known almost exclusively for his poems in Chinese, has a quatrain dedicated to Zongmi in which he calls Zongmi the “the old man in the nāga [mythological serpent = the Buddha] samadhi.”
GUIFENG CHAN: BUDDHA WORD AND WHAT IS BEYOND WORDS
Lest we conclude that Zongmi put too much stock in the written word, the buddha word of the Perfect Awakening Sutra with its sudden awakening–gradual practice model, we should recall the passage in the Chan Prolegomenon (section 8) where he says Chan enables people to realize dark understanding, which always requires getting the idea and forgetting the words, an allusion to the Daoist classic Zhuangzi. When Zongmi was speaking in this Zhuangzi mode, he could sound a bit like a master of rhetorical Chan:
The instructions of the [Chan] masters lie in liberation in the here and now. The intention [of the Chan masters] is to enable people to realize dark understanding, and dark understanding necessarily entails forgetting words [xuantong bi zai wangyan]. Therefore, if at once [the Chan trainee] does not retain any traces [yanxia bu liu qi ji], the traces are cut off at his mind ground, and principle appears at his mind source [li xian yu xinyuan], then faith, understanding, practice, and realization are not acted upon, and yet they are spontaneously achieved. The sutras, rules of discipline [vinaya], treatises, and commentaries are not rehearsed [bu xi], and yet they are spontaneously understood in a mysterious way.
If the Chan adept attains this dark understanding, he penetrates the voluminous sutras, detailed disciplinary codes, profound scholastic treatises of the great bodhisattvas, and endless commentaries of the Buddhist canon without any rehearsal. Zongmi himself did this. This is what he meant when he wrote in an autobiographical comment that, upon first encountering the Perfect Awakening Sutra as a young Chan monk under his master Daoyuan, the teachings of the sutra at once “became clear and bright like the heavens.”174 The principle of that sutra “appeared at his mind source.”
Without missing a beat, Zongmi was capable of pivoting from this rhetoric of Chan’s “sudden” dark understanding and asserting that buddha word is absolutely necessary as a standard or norm for Chan transmitters. His simile for this standard (Chan Prolegomenon, section 13) was a tool found among skilled woodworkers, the inked marking line. The craftsman on the job uses this tool to mark correctly the wood:
The sutras are like an inked marking string [shengmo], serving as a model by which to establish the false and the correct. The inked marking string is not the skill itself; a skillful craftsman must use the string as a standard [wei ping]. The sutras and treatises are not Chan; one who transmits Chan must use the sutras and treatises as a norm [wei zhun].
But in using the sutras and treatises as a norm or criterion, the Chan transmitter must never become enmeshed in the words on the page and fail to come to an understanding of mind. That will lead to formal knowledge of the written word of the sutras and treatises but never to awakening. Zongmi’s example for this negative scenario is the Buddha’s disciple Ānanda (Chan Prolegomenon, section 8), who memorized every word the Buddha spoke throughout his long preaching career but in the end, at the Buddha’s complete nirvana, had not yet achieved awakening. If there is a problem, it is always with the reader and never with the sutras:
If a seeker of the buddha path merely grasps at the terms in the teachings without understanding his own mind [bu liao zixin], then he will come to know the written words and [be able to] read the sutras, but never realize awakening. He will wear down the texts in explaining their principles, but kindle only passion, hatred, and false views. [The Buddha’s disciple] Ānanda heard everything the Buddha said and held it in his memory, but grew old without ascending to the fruit of a noble one. If you stop objective supports and return to illumination, after a short time, you will realize non-arising. Then you will know that there is a reason behind each of the bequeathed teachings and each of the approaches to crossing people over [to nirvana]. You should not place the blame on the written words [bu ying yu wenzi er ze ye].
How then can we sum up Guifeng Chan’s balancing act between Chan’s dark understanding and written canonical norms? Perhaps one of the recently discovered Chan texts of the kingdom of Xixia, the Tangut-language Record of the Hongzhou Axiom with Commentary and Clarification,175 is our best bet: In Guifeng Chan the Chan adept must realize both what is in conformity with words (sutra) and what is beyond words (Chan siddhānta), and only then is the Great Ancient Treasure Seal (the wish-fulfilling gem of Knowing) complete. In the monocular/binocular simile of that text, awakening to what is beyond words (Bodhidharma’s “no involvement with the written word”) while failing to awaken to what is in conformity with words (the sutras as an authoritative norm) is like opening the right eye and closing the left. Guifeng Chan is binocular Chan that has depth perception (stereopsis). By using two images of the same scene obtained from slightly different angles, Guifeng Chan can accurately triangulate the distance to the Great Ancient Treasure Seal/Knowing. Monocular Chanists and monocular sutra exegetes are at a disadvantage.
ZONGMI AND THE BODHIDHARMA SLOGAN
The slogan “mind-to-mind transmission; no involvement with the written word” is certainly not traceable to Bodhidharma. In fact, the only plausible candidate for a Bodhidharma saying in all of early Chan literature is one that appears in the Dunhuang manuscript Bodhidharma Anthology and in Yanshou’s Mind Mirror: “When deluded, the person pursues dharmas; when understanding, dharmas pursue the person.”176 Heze Shenhui’s Platform Talks (Tanyu) of the early eighth century says that Shenhui’s master Huineng “had a mind-to-mind transmission because he separated from the written word [yi xin chuan xin li wenzi gu].”177 This appears to be the prototype of the Bodhidharma slogan as we know it. The familiar form of the slogan and its attribution to Bodhidharma may have begun with Zongmi. Predictably, Zongmi held that for Bodhidharma the slogan was a matter of revealing the mind axiom, not a matter of freedom from the written word as an end in and of itself. According to Zongmi, Bodhidharma felt that Chinese practitioners of his day were not using sutra word and the exegesis of the scholastic texts to illumine their minds but were letting them stagnate on the page, and his slogan was a timely antidote for that particular disease (Chan Prolegomenon, section 11):
Bodhidharma received dharma in India and personally brought it to China. He saw that most of the scholars of this land had not yet obtained dharma, that their understanding was based merely on scholastic nomenclature and numerical lists, and that their practice was concerned only with phenomenal characteristics. Because his desire was to inform them that the moon does not lie in the finger [pointing at the moon] and that dharma is our mind, he just [raised the slogan] “a mind-to-mind transmission; no involvement with the written word.” To reveal his [mind] axiom and eradicate grasping he had this saying. It is not that he was preaching a liberation [consisting] of freedom from the written word.178
Yanshou’s Mind Mirror quotes this last line to counter the objection of a Chan advocate of the “separate transmission outside the teachings.” The critic insists that Chan, the single sword that identifies the target and fiercely advances straight towards it (similar to the Japanese sumō ideal of coming out straight ahead [mae ni deru] at the initial charge), demands the cessation of the complexities and ambiguities of canonical study:
Question: From of old the [Chan] axiom vehicle’s sole decree has been that one cease [canonical] study—the single sword that goes right in [dan dao zhi ru], the separate transmission outside the teachings. Why would you rely on wisdom, much learning, and extensive discussion of nature and characteristics? The words [of the canonical texts] are complex and their principles hidden; the water moves, and the pearl [of mind] is obscured. Answer: [Study of canonical word] reveals the [mind] axiom and eradicates grasping [xianzong pozhi]. The road of study, which is an expedient [upāya] to sweep away [traces], investigates the purport [= Chan axiom] to be understood. Fusion penetration [of that purport/axiom] is a not a liberation [consisting] of freedom from the written word [rongtong fei li wenzi jietuo].179
The poet Bai Juyi says much the same thing in a heptasyllabic regulated verse composed during Zongmi’s visit to Luoyang in 833. In this verse, entitled “Presented to the Superior Man Caotang Zongmi,” Bai touches upon Zongmi’s dual nature as simultaneously a transmitter of all sections of the Buddhist canon and one torch in the unbroken line of torches of the Chan mind transmission. Bai observes that Chan people who take Bodhidharma’s slogan “no involvement with the written word” too far into extremism are missing the middle path of Buddhism. In a more technical Buddhist formulation, they have fallen into the trap of seeing the becomings of the world in the light of the nihilistic extreme of is-not-ness, losing the middle path that is free of both is and is not. While the goal of the Mahayana is not to be fixed in anything (bu zhu yiqie), anti-word Chan champions of “the single sword that goes right in” are fixed in mere absence (chang zhu xukong):
My master’s path is conjoined with the Buddha.
Moment after moment the unconditioned, dharma after dharma potentiality,
His mouth storehouse transmits the twelve sections of the canon.
His mind platform illumines like a hundred-thousand torches.
Utter freedom from the written word is not the middle path.
To be forever fixed in empty space [ākāśa] is the Hinayana.
Few are those who know the coursing of the bodhisattva.
The world only values “eminent monks.”180